This article was originally reported in July 2025. Details of WashU’s Summer Internship Fund were updated from the Center for Career Engagement’s pages in November 2026.
Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) runs several programs that pay students stipends so they can take career-building summer internships, including unpaid or low-paid ones. A July 31, 2025, WashU feature highlighted one of them, the St. Louis Internship Program for Biomedical Engineering, which places students with St. Louis startups, businesses and nonprofits and pays a $6,800 summer stipend (WashU Source, July 31, 2025).
The St. Louis Internship Program for Biomedical Engineering
The program, directed by Joe Klaesner, professor of practice at the McKelvey School of Engineering, combines the stipend with panels, tours and networking events, and many of its alumni have started careers in St. Louis. “Our BME students love working at startups,” Klaesner said, noting that interns at small companies sometimes present to venture capital investors.
In summer 2025, Fiona Sun, a rising senior in biomedical engineering, interned at Equine SmartBit, a St. Louis startup developing a “smartwatch” for horses that records biometric data. She and engineer Riley Silfies, a WashU alumnus who held the same internship a year earlier and was hired by the company, tested the device’s heart-rate and temperature readings on a racehorse at the Fairmount Park racetrack. Sun said the internship taught her to “apply what I’ve learned in the classroom” (WashU Source).
The Summer Internship Fund
For undergraduates in any school, WashU’s Center for Career Engagement (CCE) runs the Summer Internship Fund (WashU CCE: Summer Internship Fund):
- Awards: up to $3,500 for in-person or hybrid unpaid internships, for undergraduates with demonstrated financial need; and up to $1,000 for in-person, hybrid or remote internships that are unpaid or low-paid (under $2,500 in total compensation), open to all undergraduates with priority for students with need.
- Requirements: the applicant must be a current undergraduate returning in the fall; the internship must run at least 160 hours over at least six weeks between May and August, with a direct supervisor, and be offered by an organization outside WashU. Applicants submit an offer letter, a budget and a short essay.
- Exclusions: fee-based internships and programs, political campaigns, positions at WashU or its medical school, startups founded by current students or recent alumni, and tuition-based summer courses do not qualify. Students cannot combine funding from several WashU departments in the same summer and can receive CCE funding at most twice.
- Timing: applications for summer 2026 have closed; applicants are notified by the first week of June, and payments begin June 30. Awards count as part of the student’s financial aid package for the next school year.
In 2025 the fund awarded $300,000 to 113 undergraduates, 74% of it to students with high financial need, for internships at host sites including the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office, Columbia University and the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2024 it gave $300,000 to 171 students (WashU CCE: Summer Internship Fund outcomes).
What international students should know
- Work authorization comes first. F-1 students need authorization, usually Curricular Practical Training (CPT), before starting an off-campus internship in the U.S. A stipend does not replace that requirement. Talk to WashU’s Office for International Students and Scholars before accepting an offer.
- CPT rules tightened in 2026. In August 2026, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program reminded schools that CPT may be authorized only when the training is an integral part of an established curriculum and directly related to the major, not merely for employment (SEVP Broadcast Message 2608-01). Schools have since narrowed which internships qualify, and a lawsuit by higher education groups challenging the guidance was pending as of November 2026 (NAFSA).
- Need-based awards depend on your aid file. The larger Summer Internship Fund awards go to students with need as determined by WashU’s financial aid office, so international students who did not apply for need-based aid should ask CCE which award they can be considered for.
- WashU at a glance: for fall 2025, WashU received 32,754 first-year applications and admitted 3,951 (12.1%). Of 16,357 students enrolled that fall, 4,512 were international, including 774 of 8,220 undergraduates (IPEDS). WashU ranks No. 16 among national universities in the U.S. News 2027 edition (Forward Pathway’s US Colleges Ranking).
For admissions and cost data, see the Washington University in St. Louis profile.
References
- WashU Source: Career Catalysts: WashU stipends fund internships, fuel professional growth (July 31, 2025)
- WashU Center for Career Engagement: Summer Internship Fund
- WashU Center for Career Engagement: Summer Internship Fund outcomes
- SEVP Broadcast Message 2608-01 (August 2026)
- WashU Office for International Students and Scholars